October 1887: Judge David Depue, in charging an Essex County grand jury, declared that a law exempting certain individuals from the state’s ban on gaming was unconstitutional and told the jurors to indict as if it did not exist. In no other way could the law’s constitutionality be tested, he said. “This seems a pretty rough and circuitous way of reaching the solution of the question,” the Law Journal editors remarked. “The result is that such persons must be deemed criminals and punished in spite of the law unless … they can convince the higher court that the law is valid.”
100 Years Ago
October 1912: The Law Journal editors thought overwork was the cause of death of leading lawyer William Corbin. “He had very knotty problems to solve during the past few years. Some of them grew out of the relations of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, of which he was counsel, and the state, and without doubt the outcome of the attempts at settlement of the Morris Canal question greatly wore upon his nervous system,” they wrote. “His choice undoubtedly was to fall in the harness, and this he did.”
